Project description
Understanding the scribe’s role in Old Norse poetry
Old Norse poetry, particularly Eddic poetry, is a literary contribution from Scandinavia to European heritage. It is composed in three types of alliterative metres, each with specific rules regarding syllable weight and the placement of unstressed syllables. However, the poetic collection has survived through a series of manuscript copies. Supported by the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions programme, the SUNEM project will investigate how scribes copied and understood the metrical forms of Eddic poetry. Focusing on the Hervarar saga, it will examine surviving manuscripts from the 14th to 17th centuries to assess changes in metrical norms during the Late Norse and Early Modern periods. This research will provide insight into traditional Norse metres.
Objective
Old Norse poetry, particularly the corpus of narrative and gnomic verse known as Eddic poetry, forms one of the richest contributions from Scandinavia to the literary heritage of Europe. This poetic corpus survives only through a chain of manuscript copies which separate our extant texts from the original compositions. The aim of SUNEM is to investigate the changing understandings of metrical forms possessed by the scribes who copied and recopied Eddic poetry. Specifically, the project will create digital texts and metrical annotations of the poems in one particular source, Hervarar saga, and use the various surviving manuscripts of this work (14th-17th centuries) as a test-case to evaluate scribal engagement with metrical norms during the Late Norse and Early Modern periods. These poems are in three different alliterative metres, each of which shows specific rules concerning features such as syllable weight or the placement of unstressed syllables. As scribes make changes to the texts they copy, they are sometimes careful to continue to adhere to these rules, and sometimes disregard them. SUNEM will investigate these patterns of change with respect to these rules in order to assess copyists' varied understandings of and commtiments to older rules of Eddic metres. These models of how scribes copied Eddic texts and conceived of the poetic forms they reproduced will be of practical use to future editors of Norse poetry, extend our understandings of traditional Norse metres beyond the Classical Norse period, and provide new perspectives on the transmission of verse.
Keywords
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Project’s keywords as indicated by the project coordinator. Not to be confused with the EuroSciVoc taxonomy (Fields of science)
Programme(s)
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Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.
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HORIZON.1.2 - Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions (MSCA)
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Calls for proposals are divided into topics. A topic defines a specific subject or area for which applicants can submit proposals. The description of a topic comprises its specific scope and the expected impact of the funded project.
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Funding scheme (or “Type of Action”) inside a programme with common features. It specifies: the scope of what is funded; the reimbursement rate; specific evaluation criteria to qualify for funding; and the use of simplified forms of costs like lump sums.
HORIZON-TMA-MSCA-PF-EF - HORIZON TMA MSCA Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
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Call for proposal
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(opens in new window) HORIZON-MSCA-2023-PF-01
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0313 Oslo
Norway
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